The Parisian

by Isabella Hammad

  He paused over one of his own remarks, contrasting Bismarck’s designs to unify Germany with the brutality of the Young Turks and their “Turkification” policy. Was this another vanity of the amateur historiographer? Doubt was a sign: if one doubted, one must not do. He ripped the page from the typewriter with one hand, wound the next one up the platen with the other, snapped across the lever, and was about to begin typing out the first paragraph again when there was a knock at the door.

  “Monsieur Hani Bey Murad!”

  Grinning at him from the hall, holding their hats, stood two old school friends, Qadri Muhammad and Riyad Assali, grown into balding men, and sporting twin woollen suits and coloured scarves.

  “Mon Dieu! Ha! What the hell are you two doing here? Ya salam I’m shocked! Kiss me, kiss me, you frightened me …”

  Qadri and Riyad embraced him, laughing. Qadri smiled under his thick moustache, and Riyad, the taller, bowed his polished head.

  “Sweet Hani, we are back to see you.”

  “Come in, please, itfadalu, itfadalu.”

  “No, Hani, we can’t come in,” said Qadri.

  “We have important news, ya‘ni,” said Riyad. “Emir Faisal is here in Paris, for the Peace Conference. He is staying at the Continental Hotel, a guest of the French government.”

  “Hani, we want you to come with us to see him. Tonight.” Qadri widened his eyes. “His Highness needs another man to lead the Arab delegation, and there isn’t much time. We think you’d be perfect, Hani. What do you think.”

  “I don’t know what to say. Can’t you come in for a moment and we’ll talk? I haven’t seen you in years—I have tea and bread.”

  “Well, ya‘ni, we’re at a disadvantage.” Riyad sighed. “They only told us last week that Faisal was welcome at the Conference. So it was last minute, ya‘ni. We have us two, Nuri Said who fought in the Revolt, and the British man, Lawrence. Everyone else is here and we are not prepared. The point is we have to work fast.”

  “Hani, just come, now. We’ll talk on the way.”

  Before he knew what was happening, Hani was knocking the logs apart and placing the guard in front of the grate, grabbing his hat, locking the door, and swinging an overcoat over his shoulders.

  At the sight of the car outside Hani’s heart swelled. The black paintwork shone silver with the streetlight. The three stood looking at the vehicle from the sidewalk, piping out garlands of cold breath, before Riyad clapped Hani on the shoulder and opened the back door. Frost lined each crevice of the windows. The chauffeur was wearing two coats.

  “The emir is the son of the Sharif Hussein, of the Hejaz,” said Qadri, turning to Hani from the front seat. “His father led the Arab Revolt against Turkey. He is a very, very brave man.”

  “So is his son, ya‘ni,” said Riyad, “and he is looking forward to meeting you.”

  Paris flashed by. Her banners of victory dangled in shreds from the lampposts. Hani’s nerves were fired. All these years of scavenging for work in Paris, temporary posts for which it was necessary to hide his qualifications, directing his energy instead into nightly translation work, which was such a slow way to help one’s country, and so oblique, such a weak salve for the guilt of exile while his uncles were being hanged by Jamal Basha. Now everything had fallen into place. His law degree was not for nothing. It did not matter that he had not heard of the Emir Faisal until this moment; what mattered was that he had been summoned.

  The Continental Hotel was a palace of lights, red plush chairs and carpets, liveried servants pushing silver trolleys. A clean-shaven man with dark curly hair, greased in a side parting, met them in the lobby. He was wearing a khaki military suit.

  “This is Nuri Said,” said Qadri.

  “Enchanté,” said Nuri, ducking his chin to smile at Hani. He led them down a corridor.

  The suite was as tall as a chapel, with vast street windows that shone with the electric chandelier and their reflections. Rising from a gilt chair before the fireplace to greet them, and dressed in azure sacerdotal robes, was His Highness, the Emir Faisal.

  Faisal was Bedouin-slight. His eyes were liquid dark, his long face curtained by a heavy white kufiya of embroidered silk; his heavy nose tended handsomely off-centre and the jewels of a dagger handle flashed between the pleats of his abaya as he leaned across for Hani’s hand. His palm was very soft. Behind the emir, Qadri and Riyad took their places beside Nuri, and Hani noticed they had already removed their scarves, and covered their own heads with white kufiyas and gold i‘qals.

  Faisal gestured for Hani to sit; Riyad, Qadri, and Nuri remained standing. Hani mumbled respectful salutations, and there was a moment of silence. Then Faisal spoke.

  “What is the public opinion of the Arabs in France?”

  His voice issued from his mouth like a murmur of the earth.

  “Your Highness. I believe … It is my impression that the citizens of France read only the French newspapers, which mislead them about the Syrians. About the Arabs in general. So even the university students here believe the Arabs are a race of men that live in the manner of the Middle Ages. Before the Middle Ages, even, ya‘ni.”

  Faisal said nothing. His hands were folded in his lap. Hani tried again.

  “I believe that France dreams today of annexing Syria, and even of ruling her fate, as she has already done in Algeria, and Morocco, and Tunisia …”

  Faisal raised one hand a few inches above the other.

  “Do you think,” he said, “that we can change France’s position, if we wage a war of independence.”

  It did not sound like a question. Hani hesitated.

  “I fear, Your Highness, they will not easily … relinquish their policy of colonization. This has been the central tenet of their overseas behaviour for decades.”

  Now, Hani must not let himself be carried away with his analyses. He had often reflected that French foreign policy was determined by the fact that France was poor in manpower where her neighbour Germany was strong. And the reason for this was that the typical French family did not produce many children. And the reason for this was that the French treated their women with impractical latitude. French women were far too free. French women were always at the theatre, rather than spending their evenings in the home preparing to reproduce. This behaviour of French women was a systemic problem, and the result of it was that the French nation wished to adopt more children, since the women produced none, and this they hoped to achieve by annexing land. Thus, war broke out with Germany.

  Hani’s lips parted, ready for speech. The emir waited. But once again Hani recognised in his own hesitation the signs of that arbitrating deity, doubt. If one doubted, one must not do. Such theories should perhaps not have their first airing in a meeting with Emir Faisal of the Hejaz, son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca.

  The emir’s eyelids were tight and swollen with fatigue. Yet even in this state he could judge the figure before him as a man of restraint and honour. He liked Hani’s aristocratic profile, his thin limbs; he liked the pauses in his sentences, which spoke of prudence and control; and therefore the answer was yes, they would employ this man, Hani Murad, to lead the Paris office for the affairs of the Arab Delegation. Faisal nodded with closed eyes to Riyad.

  Besides, they had run out of time, so they had no choice.

  In September 1919, Hani Murad was sitting at the same desk, at the same typewriter. His view was no longer of the peeling wallpaper of his old pension apartment, however, but of pedestrians on Rue Spontini ambling by in summer pinafores. Near his elbow was a plate of sandwiches, and beneath his hand was a letter from Faisal in Damascus.

  With a pencil Hani had underlined the statement: “Ask me the political situation in Syria, and I will tell you that the stones of Syria are asking for the country’s independence.” The question was how to convey that sentiment in robust, diplomatic French, in the letter he was currently typing for Clemenceau in Faisal’s name.

  The progress of the Peace Conference had been difficult
. From the first the French were more interested in entertaining Faisal than negotiating with him. A twenty-minute meeting with the president, not a word of politics, all smiles and politesse and sitting down and standing up and holding hands and admiring his robe, what was it called? A lunch with the foreign minister, plates of sliced pineapple brought especially from the Caribbean, wouldn’t His Highness like to try? Three handshakes and a violin quartet, not a word afterward; a tea party in a park of the chancellery on a blue sky day, the exposed bodies of dancers wiggling their legs to the chords of a piano, arranged in your honour, Your Highness. In Faisal’s honour! Not one of them cared for the Arabs, not one.

  Eventually Hani had persuaded Faisal to visit a French tailor, and since the emir removed his abaya and donned a trouser suit things had begun to improve. But Hani’s task was still extremely taxing, charged as he was with balancing the personality of His Royal Highness with the iniquities of the French. After eight months, his hair had turned grey at the root.

  There was a knock at the door. The voice sounded before Hani could turn in his seat.

  “Habibi, keefak.”

  Midhat Kamal strode into the room. He wore a pinstriped suit, hair oiled in a side parting, whiskers on his upper lip trimmed. A red sweet william dangled from his pocket, squashed between the folds of a green mouchoir.

  “Midhat bey. Habibi, come sit.”

  “You are working?”

  “I am, but I needed a break. Take a sandwich. Sit, Midhat.”

  “All right. No, I can’t sit. I have to talk. Hani, I know you’re busy but I have to talk to you. I’m sorry to interrupt.”

  “It’s fine. What’s wrong?”

  Midhat Kamal was never not in a state of agitation. As long as Hani had known him Midhat was always either laughing down a boulevard with a woman on his arm, or silent with a woman on his mind, obsessed by the next and the next, discarding the last with sweat on his brow as though looking for something he had still not found; rifling through the women of Paris, driven by a magma of sadness that could flare without warning in a salon over cups of tea.

  “I am leaving. My exams are finished, the boats are going again, I’ve run out of money. I have to face up, finally, to what my father expects of me. I have to go back to Nablus. I have to do my duty.”

  “That sounds very well, Midhat. That is what we all must do, eventually.”

  “Oh but Hani I … I can’t. I can’t just leave.”

  “Habibi, sit down.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Is this Jeannette?”

  “Yes, Jeannette.”

  Hani laughed. “After all these women and you are still obsessed. Really, you are so much like a character from a poem.”

  Whenever Midhat laughed his eyebrows reached upwards, as though laughter and surprise were allies; he also had a strange habit, Hani had noticed, of switching his facial expressions between laughter and distress, silliness and sadness, which sometimes made it difficult to grasp his mood. The eyebrows went up.

  “Should I write to her? What do you think I should do? I know, so much time has passed. She’s only a woman. But she has remained with me. I forget about it for periods. It slips my mind for whole weeks, it becomes the background, and I don’t notice it. And then, I start to hear it again.”

  Apparently exhausted by this speech, Midhat finally sat in the chair Hani had offered. He played with his tie, running it between two fingers. He laughed, switched, frowned.

  “Ha, I know, you don’t need to say it, yes, it wasn’t my fault, I tried to do the right thing, the Molineus were not honourable. I should be proud of how I acted. I didn’t mean to become so … I just want to know if you think I should write to her.” He leaned forward and looked into Hani’s face. “You are a man who makes good decisions, Hani. And it’s not because I think she’ll reply. Though if she did then at least it might clarify … but no, it is because I want to write. I am capable, now, of writing what I could not say before. Do you see? I have many things to say, which I have not said.”

  Before answering, Hani waited to make sure Midhat had finished.

  The character of Jeannette Molineu had become famous among the Syrians in Saint Germain. Hani first heard about her from his Damascene friend Faruq al-Azmeh, in whose apartment Midhat was lodging. This young Nabulsi, said Faruq, he is tormented. I find I must be his philosopher as well as his friend, he clings to my every word as though one of them might save him.

  “Midhat, I think you should write the letter,” said Hani, in a reasonable voice, picking up one of his sandwiches. “Even if you don’t send it.”

  “I have to send it.”

  “Well then. But mostly it will be beneficial to get out the words. I have always found that about writing.” He took a bite of the sandwich.

  “I have already written it.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Can I read it to you? And you can tell me if I should send it?”

  “Please, itfadal.”

  3 September 1919

  Dear Jeannette,

  I write to you from Paris, though I am soon to leave it. After these four years I am returning to Palestine. I am sorry that I did not write to you before. I wish I had. Regrets pile on regrets. You see I had hoped I would forget you. In my mind you were bound up for so long with pain that to think of you was always to feel again the sting of everything else. I hoped that somehow my memories of life before I came to France might be the ones to stick, and that you would slide off them, and I would remain the same beneath. But I fear that on the contrary my experience with you has in fact become one of those primeval shapes of the mind, to an imprint that burdens everything that comes afterwards. The sting has weakened with time, a little. My memories of you have not.

  I have many things to apologise for. I am sorry I did not tell you where I was going. I am sorry that I left suddenly. Three years ago I met M. Samuel Cogolati from the Medical Faculty and he told me that you had become a nurse. I imagine you have returned to Montpellier now. It is funny that I should have studied medicine, but you should have been the one to practise it. I hope that you have not seen too many terrible things. I feel shame at the thought that you probably have.

  Jeannette, you have stayed in my mind for four years. You are always, always here in this mind. Not only because pain has lasted: you have lasted. I hear your voice every day. I see you beside me on the terrace. I see your hair—all those different shapes on different days! I recall your smell. And your yellow dress. I remember your breath when you kissed me. I remember your anger when you turned from me.

  I hope you understand how painful it was to discover your father’s writings. I had hoped to marry you, but I was shy and could not say so. For this, again, I am sorry. I do stand by what I said, however. I became myself here, in this country, and for that reason I cannot represent anything. I belong here as much as I belong in Palestine.

  I wish you to know that I always meant well. It was all out of love for you.

  I wish you a good life. I shall never forget you.

  Yours,

  Midhat

  “Well,” said Hani. “You’re not a bad writer, Midhat. I’m impressed. Here’s an envelope. There are stamps in the drawer.”

  3

  In October 1919, the unrest in Egypt was still simmering. Britain had denied her request for independence at the Peace Conference, and when the leaders of the resistance were exiled to Malta the women of Cairo marched in protest. But the general strike had at last been called off and trade was returning to healthy levels between Egypt and the Levant. As a result, Midhat’s father, Haj Taher Kamal, had set out from Cairo for Damascus to purchase more silks, and on the way he decided to stop in Nablus.

  The autumn heat oiled the faces that passed under the midday sun. Haj Taher went by the khan, saluted his agent Hisham through the hanging yards of canvas outside the Kamal store, accepted a coffee heavy with sugar and cardamom, and chatted with some old customers passing throu
gh. They praised God for the end of the war; they grumbled over the liberties of the British soldiers; they acknowledged the provisions of seed grain and livestock, and the happy revival of normal commerce.

  Haj Taher Kamal was a merchant because his father had been a merchant, and his father before him. Merchants were the glue that bound Nablus to the surrounding villages: for the village people they functioned as credit lines, patrons, employers, even friends; for the city dwellers they were both harbingers of novelty and pillars of tradition, and when the festivals came around the Nabulsis danced through the markets sprinkling the ground with coloured ribbons and pistachio shells. As far back as living memory could reach the foundation stones of Nabulsi society had been the mosque, the city gates, and the central marketplace, Khan al-Tujjar.

  Haj Taher’s grandfather began his business carting crates of Nabulsi soap on mules down through Gaza and into Cairo, returning after weeks with huge rope-bound bundles of fresh Egyptian cotton, which he sold in the Nablus khan, using the profits to buy more soap, travel to Cairo, and repeat the circuit. When Haj Taher’s father inherited the business, he began using local tailors and dyers, and in this way managed to expand the Kamal stall in the khan into a clothing shop. Then he established relations with textile producers in Damascus, who wove silks from Mount Lebanon with cotton shipped from Britain into one cloth, dyed indigo, scarlet, emerald, saffron yellow, vermilion; and, with leftover connections in Cairo, opened a Kamal department store on Bulaq Street, dispensing quilts, pillow and mattress covers, scarves, handkerchiefs, headkerchiefs, large bolts of white and coloured fabrics sold by the arm length. This was the business Haj Taher inherited. The Cairo store grew stronger as the market expanded, and in addition to the basics they were soon selling thobs and sadari waistcoats and sarawil pants, and abayas and the headbands that peasants wore to their weddings.